(Continued from Part 3)
How do we then connect with God? Because we did need that, we feel the need to create some kind of a connection with God. In fact, Swami Vivekananda defined religion as the eternal relation between the eternal soul and the eternal God. So that’s one very good way of looking at what religion is, irrespective of the specifics, of different religions.
Paramahansa Yogananda explains “The theologies of all great religions, which have one common foundation – the searching and finding and realization of God.” But religious truth without practical realizations is limited in its value. How can the blind lead the blind?
Few men understand the Bhagavad Gita as its writer, Vyasa, understood its truths! Few men understand the words of Christ as he understood them! Vyasa, Christ, BabaJi and all other perfected Masters perceived the same truth. They described it variously, in different languages. In the study of the Bhagavad Gita and the New Testament I have perceived their meanings as one.
Paramahansa Yogananda goes on to say that with the decimation of the family, the age-old religious rites of the generation fade away. When the upholding religion is annihilated, then sin overpowers the whole family.”
Essentially what many religions try to show is what kind of a relationship; I as an individual have with that larger reality? Now, our tradition in India, have done a deep study of the various kinds of relationships human beings have over the centuries. All human beings have tried to think of God and connect themselves with God. The different kind of relationships they have formed with God. Now according to this classical enumeration, you will find it in many of the books of devotional schools, that there are five classical relationships people have formed with God and they stand for the five approaches or orientations towards the divine. Sometime the word, the orientation, is called ‘Bhava’.
To be continued…
“To be or not to be, with my Mother?”
Bibliography:
➢ God Talks With Arjuna ~~ Bhagavad Gita ~ Sri Sri Paramahansa
➢ Autobiography of a Yogi: Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda
➢ Understanding Vedanta: Swami Tyagananda.
➢ Meditation & Vedanta: Swami Adiswarananda
➢ Freedom Of Voice: Swami Vivekananda
➢ Inner Voice . Reflection, as Guided By Divine Mother Through Robbin Ghosh